A portrait of Chinggis Khan from an album of Yuan emperors, painted after his death
Portrait of Chinggis Khan, Yuan dynasty album
Marked Karakorum

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The Mongol empire

Temüjin united the Mongol tribes and took the title Genghis Khan in 1206. His sons and grandsons built the largest land empire in history, from Korea to Hungary, with a swift postal relay of riders.

Place
Karakorum · Khanbaliq (Beijing) · Baghdad · Ain JalutAsia, The Middle East, Europe
Laid out as
An empireOne power across a long stretch of time: how it grew, held together, and came apart.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet
Image
Unknown court artist, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. ITemüjin
  2. IIHorse archers
  3. IIIThe siege of Baghdad
  4. IVThe yam, a postal relay
  5. VKublai Khan and Marco Polo
  6. VIThe empire breaks up

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Genghis Khan
  • Börte
  • Sorghaghtani Beki
  • Kublai Khan
  • Khutulun

Objects

  • Paiza passports
  • The Secret History of the Mongols

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1206 to 1368. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?